This invention relates generally to rigid supports and holders for flexible plastic bags of the kind that are not self-supporting and which are commonly used to receive and transport residential trash, leaves, brush and related matter that is to be discarded; more specifically, it relates to a device for preventing any discarded matter that has sharp corners or sharp points (such as rose brush clippings) from accidentally tearing the sides of such a plastic bag during the process of loading the discarded matter in the bag.
It is known that large flexible bags, typically made of thin polyethylene, are especially handy for disposing of trash and waste matter which is to be discarded, especially including refuse from a yard--such as leaves, weeds, branches and thorns, grass clippings, etc. These bags are usually relatively large, often rated at 39 to 55 gallons; and many such bags are specifically sold for the purpose of accommodating lawn and yard refuse. These relatively large bags are often called "lawn and leaf" bags, although they probably differ from other plastic bags only in their total capacity and perhaps their wall thickness.
In addition to "lawn and leaf" or similar bags intended for outdoor use, it is common to use polyethylene bags having a capacity of about 26 to 33 gallons for handling household trash and garbage that tends to regularly materialize inside a residence, including discarded packing material, waste paper, junk mail, empty bottles and food scraps, etc. Such indoor-type or "garbage" bags are more commonly used within a house, of course, and they are less frequently exposed to the kind of sharp material which would be expected to cut or tear a bag. That is, if a household trash bag fails, it normally does so because its capacity was exceeded, i.e., too many heavy things were put into the bag, and the excess weight caused a seam or wall to part. But because there is no way to anticipate whether a consumer will use a 26-gallon plastic bag inside the house or in the yard, all such bags having a size that is large enough to make them practical for outdoor use will be considered to fall within the scope of this invention. For convenience, then, all plastic bags having a rated capacity of at least 26 gallons will be referred to herein as simply trash bags.
It is known to use auxiliary holders for trash bags in order to support them during the time that trash is being accumulated therein. One such holder is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,037,778 to Boyle entitled "Universal Bag Support." Apart from the technical advantages or disadvantages of the Boyle structure, his disclosure makes a very good point when it suggests that plastic bag holders may advantageously be divided into two principal groups: those which support a bag from the outside and those which support it from the inside. The Boyle disclosure is also believed to be accurate when it describes many of the disadvantages of holders that are of the "outside" support category; naturally, Boyle recommends and teaches a holder of the "inside-the-bag" type.
There are believed to be many inherent disadvantages of outside supports, including complexity, cost, the possibility of losing clamps or loose parts, etc. However, one such outside support has at least been proposed that would reduce at least one of the problems of the prior art--in that it reduces the number of parts to only two. This two-piece holder comprises a special elastic member (like a giant rubber band) that cooperates with a specially configured cardboard support; this holder is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,338,979 to Dow entitled "Bag Holding Device and Process." However, as with all such constructions, a trash bag in a Dow holder is vulnerable because it is inside the holder--where it comes into contact with all kinds of things that can tear the wall of a bag. That is, the sharp edge of a can or the thorns of a rose bush could easily puncture and then proceed to introduce a longitudinal tear in an unprotected bag that is resting inside the holder. Persons who have had experience with thorns starting at the top of a bag and ripping their way all the way down to the bottom of a polyethylene bag will clearly appreciate the deficiency of supporting a bag upright but leaving its sides exposed to tearing elements. The typical result of using such a holder to collect thorny refuse is that grabbing the top of the plastic bag and lifting it out of the holder causes the immediate dumping of all the accumulated trash onto the ground adjacent the holder.
The aforementioned Boyle holder, on the other hand, is an inside-the-bag support, and it does seem like it might solve at least a few of the problems associated with outside supports. However, it is believed that even a Boyle holder is not perfect, in that the effort to make it a truly "universal" holder for all kinds and sizes of trash bags has required such compromises as to render the holder less efficient in some ways than it could be. For one thing, the desire to fabricate a Boyle holder out of economical cardboard and yet make it expandable in girth has required that the side panels be arranged as a serial array of panels that are not connected along one "edge." The result is what may be referred to as a "wrap-around" holder that includes one very long piece of cardboard having a length that ideally exceeds the maximum anticipated circumference of the bags that are to be held. (In this regard, it should be known that even a conventional 33-gallon trash bag has a circumference of about five feet, and some 55-gallon bags have a circumference of nearly eight feet.) Of course, if the circumference of the bag is not exceeded, so that there is no overlap of the two ends of the wrapped holder, than at least part of the plastic bag will remain unprotected by virtue of the gap in the cardboard "wall" when the holder is installed. And to paraphrase an old saying about the strength of a chain, a holder that is intended to provide tear protection for the walls of trash bags is only as good as the weakest part of the holder/bag combination. Expressed in other words, if any part of a vulnerable trash bag is left unprotected, then the entire bag is subject to becoming sufficiently damaged that the entire bag can fail. Another way of evaluating a trash bag holder is based upon the recognition that trash bags (somewhat like eggshells) do not generally fail in part; a bag is either totally successful in keeping its trash contained--or it is usually considered to be a failure by its user. That is, no one takes any real satisfaction that only half of a trash bag's contents have spilled onto a freshly swept side-walk or driveway--when one side of a bag rips. In the real world of trash removal, then, there is no room for partial success of trash bags.
Another deficiency of a wrap-around holder like that shown by Boyle is that it can be efficiently used only in the mode in which it is shown in the figures of the Boyle patent--namely, upright. That is, if a Boyle holder is truly collapsable (for compact storage) as he claims, then there is no guaranteed way of keeping the holder--and hence a bag--open when it is lying on its side. Those persons who like to first accumulate leaves in a pile and then sweep them into a horizontally oriented bag would likely need the aid of an assistant in order to grasp and hold a Boyle device in an open condition in order for it to receive leaves. Turning what could be a one-man yard job into a two-man job is not what most people would consider to be progress, unless one's goal is perhaps to try to cure the world's unemployment problem.
It follows, therefore, that there remained a need for a satisfactory way of efficiently supporting flexible bags in at least a temporary fashion so that they can be filled with refuse, while at the same time protecting all of the side walls of the bag from being ripped by a sharp edge. It is an object of this invention to provide such a holder and do so in an economic manner.
Another object is to provide a holder for flexible bags which can be stowed in a relatively flat condition so that it occupies a minimum amount of space, while at the same time providing a stable construction for holding a bag in such a way as to encompass the maximum volume of space permitted by the geometry of the bag.
A further object is to provide a holder that is stable and not subject to collapse when in either a horizontal and a vertical mode, so that leaves or other refuse can be accumulated in a trash bag by a single person using either the "vertical dump" or the "horizontal sweep" method of trash loading.
These and other objects will be apparent from a reading of the specification and the claims appended thereto, as well as reference to the several figures of the drawings provided herewith.